


petit a petit

by butterflyswimmer



Category: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni | Higurashi When They Cry
Genre: Comfort, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Healing, Multi, Post-Canon, Relationship(s), Romance, Short, Slice of Life, mion pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 23:52:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11977725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflyswimmer/pseuds/butterflyswimmer
Summary: 1989. A summer evening, a collection of quieter moments.





	petit a petit

**Author's Note:**

> _petit a petit, l’oiseau fait son nid._  
> 
> little by little, the bird makes its nest.

She sits and waits by the sliding doors. This is their arrangement - he knows what time she’s free from family engagements. The wooden door at the end of the garden path is left unlocked by the servants leaving.

 

Sonozaki Mion is twenty-three. After graduating university the spring before last, she’s been living in Hinamizawa again, is back to training to take up her position as the family head. Moreover, summer is underway, and Watanagashi approaching. It’s an extremely busy time, even with her grandmother still in good health. Mion takes on as many duties as she’ll be allowed.

 

It’s why she looks forward to this time of day the most, as she watches the moon rise above the trees surrounding the property. The air is still, warm, and alive with the cries of the cicadas. She closes her eyes, and it sounds like home.

 

She’s not sure how long she’s been like that when she hears the door slide open from the other side of the room. She doesn’t turn, only smiles until he comes to sit by her side.

 

Maebara Keiichi is twenty-two. After graduating university a few months prior, he’s finally back.

 

They’d decided to go to Tokyo together, the three of them, and it had been the right decision - they’d had the time of their lives. They’d lived together for Mion’s last two years. It had been everything she’d wanted and more, and she still wondered at how limited her view of the world had been before it all. Like she wouldn’t have been able to become everything she was able to be before the experience.

She’d agonised, inevitably, about coming back alone, with the two of them all that way away for another year. It had often played on her mind in the lead-up to her graduation - that was, until they sat her down one evening as if having read her mind, as they so often seemed to. The two of them had reassured her nothing would change, and that they’d visit her, had said that she’d better visit them, and that she was needed. The whole of Hinamizawa needed her. It’d be better that they weren’t in her way. And when she finally spat it out - asked whether they’d definitely both come back to her - they’d looked at each other, then her, dumbfounded.

“Mion,” and Keiichi had waited until she’d met his gaze, “let me guess: you’re worried I want to stay in Tokyo because it’s my home.”

When she’d nodded hesitantly, he’d shook his head, smiled. “Sure, I was born here. But Hinamizawa’s my home. Hinamizawa, and Satoko, and Rika-chan, and most of all Rena and you, Mion. That’s what home is to me.”

-

They sit together for a while, side by side, knees just touching. Breathe in Hinamizawa’s night air, breathe it back out.

 

Neither of them can live with her yet - not while her grandmother’s still alive. Not to mention that once the time came for Mion to really inherit the family, it wasn’t exactly standard practice to have two others succeed it with her. It’s just one of the many worries that have assailed her since adulthood began.

 

Rena is away, travelling. She’d told them it was what she wanted to do, once she finished university. To further shake her fear of leaving the village, and to see more of the world. She was the one who’d grown perhaps the most for the experience of moving away, and seeing her thrive had brought them all the happiness in the world. Her smile was more dazzling than they’d ever known it.

 

Mion couldn’t deny, however selfish it was, that she’d been upset when she’d heard that she’d be without Rena for a further three months. That said, the feeling was almost instantly overwhelmed with a pride that made her heart swell, if that were a strong enough word for the sensation. Together, they’d told Rena they’d support her in anything she wanted.

 

The stint was nearly up - she’d be back for Watanagashi - and the fact that the time was so close was making the last bit of waiting that much more torturous. They’d been apart for what felt like an eternity, but Rena’s letters and calls were full of stories of adventure, and her happiness shone through the words. And with that, they could cope.

 

“It never lets up, huh?” They’re the first words he’s spoken, and she turns to him at last.

“Hm?”

“This thing.” He gestures vaguely out at the shadowy grounds surrounding the porch, and she understands. Life. The older she got, the more she realised it was just one thing after another. She knows exactly what he means, laughs weakly.

“Seems silly to complain.”

Just like her, he knows just what she means even with those few words, nods deeply. They knew struggle. They all did, and they knew what it felt like to come within a hair’s breadth of losing one’s life, and surely none of this should matter. Still, the fact that it did was only an indication of how much they’d all healed. And so, she was grateful.

 

She hasn’t noticed Keiichi shift to kneel behind her until he moves her hair to rest on her shoulder. She’s still in her formal attire, and he loosens the sash around her robe gently, just enough to be able to slip the material off each of her shoulders. It’s a modest gesture, and tender - he always was. She closes her eyes - this was their routine, at the end of days like today. When his fingers begin to find the knots of tension and work them away one by one better than even she’d be able to, she lets out a sigh, feels herself truly relax at last.

It’s like this for a while, just his fingertips and the night air on her bare skin before her face sinks involuntarily into a smile. He concentrates so hard on his task that it takes a moment for him to notice, at which point he only makes a noise of inquiry.

“It’s just - can you imagine doing this five years ago?”

He snorts a little derisively, though it’s unclear whom it’s directed at. His voice is soft, as if not to disturb the night itself. “You say that as though you weren’t the one who went red every time I looked at you for more than two seconds.”

“Oh, shut up.” If it had come a little less quickly, she might’ve been able to pretend it was more harsh and less embarrassed.

His response is a laugh, deep, warm, and she doesn’t mind so much hearing that, even if he’s laughing at her. He rubs circles into her shoulder blades.

 

“When did we become adults, Kei-chan?”

“Are we?” It comes a moment later. “We haven’t changed, really. We’re stronger. We’re more grown up. We’re happier,” she smiles at that, and she can tell he does too, from his voice, “but we haven’t changed. Not really.” She hums in thought. It’s true, they’d all been through most of what life could throw at them before their teenage years were out - before they’d begun, for others in their group. They’d certainly done most of their maturing before they’d ever left Hinamizawa to see the rest of what life had to offer. And that was all growing up was, really - learning how to deal with it all, one thing at a time.

“I wonder if that’s okay.”

“We’ve gotten this far being ourselves.”

 

The conversation sinks into silence again, and he continues the massage long past the last of the stress draining from her body, if only to keep touching her.

 

“I miss Rena.”

“Me too. It’s lucky though, isn’t it?”

“What’s that?”

He comes to sit beside her again, finally. Finds her fingers, laces them with his own. “That we have something that feels so right everything else feels wrong.”

“You and your words.” She waits. “You’re right, though.” And she turns, then. Kisses him gently on the lips. She couldn’t not when he spoke everything she felt even in the deepest recesses of her heart so eloquently.

When she pulls away, she squints at his face in the dim lighting. A moth flutters by. “Are you blushing?”

“Shut up.”

“Oh, we definitely haven’t changed.” And she collapses into raucous laughter, falling back onto the tatami mat, until he’s telling her to be quiet lest she incite her grandmother’s wrath - that is, before he joins in.

 

“Anyway, it’s not that.” He pulls her back up with him, grasping her shoulders, stares at her dead-on with a look reminiscent of those he’d worn in the days of their club activities - the rare ones from when he’d won and she’d been at his mercy. His gaze is locked onto hers. “Just that I’m never any less amazed at how lucky I was, to end up with the two most beautiful women in all the world as my girlfriends. And you know I don’t just mean this,” he brushes her cheek with his thumb, “but in here, too,” and drops his hand to rest over her heart, from which she promptly slaps it away.

“That was lame.”

“You say that, but who’s blushing now?”

“I hate you so much, you know that?”

And he has to wrestle her back to the ground from the fighting stance she’s attempting to take up, trying desperately to stifle his laughter. Still, it’s true - she can feel her cheeks burning, because for whatever reason, her chest had never stopped feeling the way it did back when their days had only been the stuff of accidental brushes, hands on hair and throwaway flirtations. But she’d never admit in a million years she still fell in love with him all over again every time he smiled at her. That was one she absolutely wouldn’t live down.

 

Outside the night deepens, and she wonders if they’re the only two awake in the whole village. She likes that thought. A few fireflies buzz around and he watches them, entranced. That was Keiichi - always so enthralled by everything. And that was her, being reminded for the millionth time why he was one of the two people she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

 

“What would’ve happened if we hadn’t met each other?”

“Don’t say that.” He responds almost immediately, then actually considers the question. “Thinking about that, though - it lets me be grateful, for everything. It all led here.” He moves behind her again, this time so he can slip his arms around her waist. If it were earlier in the day, she’d make a quip about how clingy he’d become - but she’s better at being honest these days, and she only relaxes into the embrace. It feels like a promise of peace.

 

The next time she’s aware of the world, she’s in his arms, being carried through the dark halls of the building to her bedroom. Next is when he lays her down in her futon, adjusts her hair, limbs, makes sure she’ll sleep comfortably. It’s only when she sees his shadow move towards the door that she pulls herself back into lingering consciousness, enough to ask him not to leave yet.

“Did you want me to undress you as well?”

She can hear the smirk in his voice, only has enough energy to groan in response, but he comes back to her side all the same. Doesn’t question it, even though she’ll be asleep soon, and outside darkness has consumed the village. It’s somewhere people can walk safely, even in the deepest part of the night - at least now. Of course, it wasn’t like he’d’ve been able to resist her request were that not true.

Her eyelids are too heavy, and it’s after the world has faded that she says the last words she can muster; “I can’t wait until you both live here. For us to be together again. Properly.”

 

And it’s not like their lives are simple, or conventional, or ever have been. And it’s not like there aren’t struggles they can’t comprehend ahead - and yet he lies down next to her, now, all the same. Finds his way onto a slither of futon, so they’re pressed right together, like some childish game where the floor’s the sea. The darkness is the warmth of his chest, and she feels his hand at the back of her head, his fingers in her hair. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

And they both chuckle, then, their own joke - the thought that there might be room for any more love in their lives than already existed.

 

It might be the sleep slowly overcoming her, or the sounds of the village - its constant song, night or day, and the knowledge it’s theirs, their place in the world. It might be when he leans over to place a kiss on the line of her jaw, but somewhere in it all she finds the stillness that exists between her heartbeats, surfacing again and again like waves - the feeling that whatever the world had left for them yet, this was more. Enough, and more.

**Author's Note:**

> considering this was made with the full intention of being nothing but self-indulgent domestic fluff i’m pretty happy with how it turned out
> 
> p.s. [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUu9q2omcUI) came on shuffle just as i was finishing the fic :’)


End file.
